After a narrow escape from an alien base set to self destruct, your spacecraft plummets through asteroids and other space debris towards a lone planet, isolated in the far reaches of space. After a shaky descent, you emerge in a land that is simultaneously breathtaking and ominous.

The steady fall of rain drops splatter against your visor, and feed the many streams cutting through the decrepit, yet strangely alive landscape. Moss clings to the damp rock walls in random

This tree, the source of most of the planet’s life, provides a hearty platforming challenge for players.

formation, a tree towers high into the cloudy sky, casting a looming shadow over the land, and indigenous and unique life forms scuttle across the ground with a single-minded determination.

What you notice most as you trek through the various locales, ranging from dry deserts to a frosty tundra to a molten core, of the strange planet, named Tallon IV, is a pervasive sense of loneliness. Writing etched into stone walls scattered throughout the world tell of a once prosperous civilization and race, known as the Chozo, inhabiting the ground you now stand upon. But a terrible and unidentifiable menace slowly tore their home into ruin, and now not a soul remains on the round sphere save for yourself…and maybe, just maybe, whatever it was that heartlessly wiped the Chozo out.

It’s a heart wrenching and gripping tale that you piece together from various writings, and it makes you feel sympathetic not only for the Chozo but for Tallon IV, which, through the descriptions in the writings sounds like a lush and sacred paradise, a land that had endeared itself to its original inhabitants.

But the Tallon IV the Chozo knew and loved is largely gone, reduced to a fragment of its former glory.

You are now determined to search the remainder of the planet in the hopes of finding any survivors. As you descend deeper into the fiery depths of Tallon IV, the situation looks more and more grim, and you get the sense that something is hunting you, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Samus Aran, an intergalactic bounty hunter and the star of the Metroid series.

Retro Studios designed a game that evokes players curiosity and sympathy, drawing them into a wonderful world filled with beauty but also rife with danger. Whether it was with the game’s beautiful and melancholy musical score, the detailed visuals or the absorbing narrative, Retro Studios grasped players’ imaginations and immersed them in the alien landscape.